8 ms·

Sometimes you don't really have a choice if all your friends and family use Facebook...

by emmaglossy 7y ago

marve 7y ago
Isn't that choosing to be part of the problem then?
mikro2nd 7y ago
No. Really. You do have a choice. Exercising unpopular choices frequently requires a spine.
- thsealienbstrds 7y ago
  Individually, you have a choice. But not using e.g. WhatsApp needs to be a collective decision or it won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    I know some of this is regional, but despite the myriad chat services, I quit them all and have been doing just fine with email and SMS. Can't use phone numbers since it's all spam all the time, tho.
  - mikro2nd 7y ago
    There is no such thing as a "collective decision". There is only the decision of each person. Any movement to quit these sickness-inducing manipulators has to start somewhere otherwise you end up like those Buddhists who won't enter Nirvana until all other creatures are also ready to enter Nirvana, so they all end up hanging about outside the gates (as it were...), forever waiting. The decision to be the first,... to lead,... to tread without trepidation where others fear to go,... that's what I called growing a spine. "Won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there" is simply an expression of that fear.
    - diminoten 7y ago
      You're acting like we can't use multiple systems, or that people care if they can interact with us...
    - thsealienbstrds 7y ago
      Let's say you run your own mail server. How much privacy do you really gain if 99% of the mail that comes in and goes out passes through Google servers? It doesn't matter what you do by yourself. You just can't expect everybody to run their own mail server. I run my own mail server, and while I'm happy to be self-reliant, it's hardly a win for my privacy (also, mail server administration is a pita). Same goes for every other communication tech. Just because your endpoint is not spied upon, if every other endpoint is spied upon you gain nothing. If you don't use WhatsApp, but all your friends use WhatsApp to talk about you then you gained nothing. If you really believe there is no such thing as collective decision-making then imho you already gave up in the fight for privacy. But even if we boycot Google and Facebook, they are not the main problem. Their business model is the main problem. Spying on your users, training predictive models, and using those models to exploit people is simply too profitable, and therefore too attractive for any profit-seeking company to ignore. Until we solve that problem by deciding as a society that these business models are not ok, this 1984-like world we currently live in will be our reality.
  - justaguyhere 7y ago
    On the other hand, you could be the first among your family/friends to not use FB's products, and slowly others will follow.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  I explicitly told everybody that I turned off messenger notifications on every device and uninstalled facebook from my devices years ago. If they want to reach me they can use Signal, Telegram or Keybase. Interestingly enough even my mother (in her 70s, no idea about computers) can use Telegram without a hickup. I guess it is a matter of dedication to push your peers off from Facebook.
  - taneq 7y ago
    > If they want to reach me they can use Signal, Telegram or Keybase. Maybe even... gasp SMS. Or "telephone".
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      Sure but there are places like Berlin in Germany where network coverage is absolutely broken. Wifi works though. This is why the preference over SMS/GSM call.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      SMS can be intercepted and read by essentially every country in the world and many criminal groups because of how flawed the protocol is. While smaller countries can't do mass ingress and automated analysis, they can still input your number into a system and then see what you text. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/ss7-hack-explained-mobile-phone-vulnerability-snooping-texts-calls https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/ss7-hack-...
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    WhatsApp is almost certainly safer and more privacy respecting than Telegram. Telegram uses highly nonstandard cryptography (the founder hired a bunch of math competition winners and told them to design encryption from first principles), doesn't have E2E by default (unlike Whatsapp), and is owned by a quite sketchy Russian oligarch who started spending on democracy-related causes after a falling out with Putin. Telegram uses dubious encryption and lies about their business (for ex calling themselves a nonprofit when they aren't), and they retroactively retracted and then narrowed their bug bounty program. WhatsApp hired the company behind Signal to help them implement Signal's encryption protocol.[1] While it's not as good as Signal because it's not open source and thus can't be independently verified, if Facebook deliberately lied about the security of a product used by governments around the world they would face serious consequences.[2] See for example previous discussion [3]. For a detailed analysis of the flaws in their protocol, see [4] 1: https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/end-to-end-for-everyone/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/end-to-end-for-everyone/ 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/afghanistan-whatsapp-taliban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/afghanistan-wh... 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788 4: https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypt...

Sometimes you don't really have a choice if all your friends and family use Facebook...

marve 7y ago

Isn't that choosing to be part of the problem then?

mikro2nd 7y ago

No. Really. You do have a choice. Exercising unpopular choices frequently requires a spine.

thsealienbstrds 7y ago
Individually, you have a choice. But not using e.g. WhatsApp needs to be a collective decision or it won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  I know some of this is regional, but despite the myriad chat services, I quit them all and have been doing just fine with email and SMS. Can't use phone numbers since it's all spam all the time, tho.
- mikro2nd 7y ago
  There is no such thing as a "collective decision". There is only the decision of each person. Any movement to quit these sickness-inducing manipulators has to start somewhere otherwise you end up like those Buddhists who won't enter Nirvana until all other creatures are also ready to enter Nirvana, so they all end up hanging about outside the gates (as it were...), forever waiting. The decision to be the first,... to lead,... to tread without trepidation where others fear to go,... that's what I called growing a spine. "Won't work because everybody else is still stuck in there" is simply an expression of that fear.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    You're acting like we can't use multiple systems, or that people care if they can interact with us...
  - thsealienbstrds 7y ago
    Let's say you run your own mail server. How much privacy do you really gain if 99% of the mail that comes in and goes out passes through Google servers? It doesn't matter what you do by yourself. You just can't expect everybody to run their own mail server. I run my own mail server, and while I'm happy to be self-reliant, it's hardly a win for my privacy (also, mail server administration is a pita). Same goes for every other communication tech. Just because your endpoint is not spied upon, if every other endpoint is spied upon you gain nothing. If you don't use WhatsApp, but all your friends use WhatsApp to talk about you then you gained nothing. If you really believe there is no such thing as collective decision-making then imho you already gave up in the fight for privacy. But even if we boycot Google and Facebook, they are not the main problem. Their business model is the main problem. Spying on your users, training predictive models, and using those models to exploit people is simply too profitable, and therefore too attractive for any profit-seeking company to ignore. Until we solve that problem by deciding as a society that these business models are not ok, this 1984-like world we currently live in will be our reality.
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  On the other hand, you could be the first among your family/friends to not use FB's products, and slowly others will follow.
StreamBright 7y ago
I explicitly told everybody that I turned off messenger notifications on every device and uninstalled facebook from my devices years ago. If they want to reach me they can use Signal, Telegram or Keybase. Interestingly enough even my mother (in her 70s, no idea about computers) can use Telegram without a hickup. I guess it is a matter of dedication to push your peers off from Facebook.
- taneq 7y ago
  > If they want to reach me they can use Signal, Telegram or Keybase. Maybe even... gasp SMS. Or "telephone".
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    Sure but there are places like Berlin in Germany where network coverage is absolutely broken. Wifi works though. This is why the preference over SMS/GSM call.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    SMS can be intercepted and read by essentially every country in the world and many criminal groups because of how flawed the protocol is. While smaller countries can't do mass ingress and automated analysis, they can still input your number into a system and then see what you text. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/ss7-hack-explained-mobile-phone-vulnerability-snooping-texts-calls https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/ss7-hack-...
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  WhatsApp is almost certainly safer and more privacy respecting than Telegram. Telegram uses highly nonstandard cryptography (the founder hired a bunch of math competition winners and told them to design encryption from first principles), doesn't have E2E by default (unlike Whatsapp), and is owned by a quite sketchy Russian oligarch who started spending on democracy-related causes after a falling out with Putin. Telegram uses dubious encryption and lies about their business (for ex calling themselves a nonprofit when they aren't), and they retroactively retracted and then narrowed their bug bounty program. WhatsApp hired the company behind Signal to help them implement Signal's encryption protocol.[1] While it's not as good as Signal because it's not open source and thus can't be independently verified, if Facebook deliberately lied about the security of a product used by governments around the world they would face serious consequences.[2] See for example previous discussion [3]. For a detailed analysis of the flaws in their protocol, see [4] 1: https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/end-to-end-for-everyone/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/18/end-to-end-for-everyone/ 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/afghanistan-whatsapp-taliban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/afghanistan-wh... 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788 4: https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypt...